


Angels don't blush

by Elle_Nahiara



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-27 09:23:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20043673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elle_Nahiara/pseuds/Elle_Nahiara
Summary: “Bokuto-san is doing his best. It’s just humans are very complicated.”Kei raised his eyebrows. “It’s his job to know those things.”“He is not so much into technology. He prefers… you know, the ‘human’ in ‘humanity’. Feelings, memories, attachments.”“Gross,” Kei said.“I think it’s nice,” Yamaguchi said, shrugging. “You are just a bad human, too detached.”Kei snorted. “And you are a bad angel. Too… present.”





	Angels don't blush

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Español available: [El rubor de los ángeles](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20582384) by [Elle_Nahiara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elle_Nahiara/pseuds/Elle_Nahiara)

“We’re here,” Kei said, stopping the car and getting down. While Yamaguchi got out of the passenger’s side, he put a blanket on the ground. He took out their cooler with sandwiches, and the thermos with coffee.

Then he looked back at Yamaguchi, who was still in the car and struggling with the seatbelt. 

“What the hell,” he muttered, snorting in amusement. “You are the worst human ever,” he added, leaning inside and helping Yamaguchi escape his buckled-up status.

“To be fair,” Yamaguchi said, pouting a little and stepping down, “I’ve never been in a car before.”

“That explains the screaming when I started it out,” Kei mentioned, laughing softly. “Why didn’t you just teleport yourself away from the belt?”

Yamaguchi blinked. “Oh. Oh that is a good idea... “

Kei rolled his eyes. “Have you considered telling whoever’s in charge of educating you guys on dealing with humanity that they suck at their jobs?”

“Bokuto-san is doing his best. It’s just humans are very complicated.”

Kei raised his eyebrows. “It’s his job to know those things.”

“He is not so much into technology. He prefers… you know, the ‘human’ in ‘humanity’. Feelings, memories, attachments.”

“Gross,” Kei said. 

“I think it’s nice,” Yamaguchi said, shrugging. “You are just a bad human, too detached.”

Kei snorted. “And you are a bad angel. Too… present.”

Yamaguchi playfully glared at him. 

  


Kei remembered the day Yamaguchi had showed up, around a year ago. Needless to say, it had felt like a fever dream. He was just walking out of campus and suddenly, someone grabbed Kei’s shoulder. 

“There you are!” Yamaguchi had said. 

Kei had blinked. “Uh… do I know you?”

“No!” The other had replied, cheerfully. “But I know you, Tsukishima Kei.”

Then, Kei carefully stepped back. “Look, if you want to ask me out-” he had taken a glance at the other, considering it. Kind of cute, but the whole creepy approach had killed the appeal.

“What?”

Kei sighed. Not that, then. “Ah, okay. Well, I’m not interested in buying anything.” 

“Huh?” Yamaguchi blinked up at him. “No, no. I came to you because you need help.”

“Well, no thank you.” Kei said, after a beat. 

“Wh- You can’t just say no!”

“Did my brother send you? Is that why you know my name?” Kei questioned, but he did not really care. He began to walk away. 

“Your… well, kind of, yes. And your mother, and your father.” He had followed after him.

“I don’t know what you are, but… tell them to get their money back.”

“What I… Oh! Right! I’m Yamaguchi!”

“Okay,” Kei muttered, pushing people to try to get into the subway station as soon as possible. “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

“Oh, right! _ What _ I am! Of course.” Yamaguchi nodded. “I’m your guardian angel.”

Kei had turned for a moment, glaring, his patience gone. “Look, whatever crazy organization you are part of, tell my family I’m fine. Just dealing with university. They don’t have to send a cultist after me. I get it, I’ll call.”

“Wh-”

“Get away from me.” 

And Kei had left.

  


When he got home, Yamaguchi was there. Inside his apartment. Kei simply closed the door and noped away, taking his cellphone out to call the police.

Except as he was halfway down on the elevator, Yamaguchi was there.

“What is this?” he asked, taking Kei’s phone.

“What- What the fuck.”

Yamaguchi pressed the phone to his ear. “There’s a little man here! Do we have any emergency, he asks!”

“We _ do _have an emergency! I’m hallucinating!” He said, looking around, now a little panicked. He snatched his phone back and hung up.

“Oh, are you? That’s bad! What are you seeing?”

“I’m seeing you!? Where did you even come from?!” 

Yamaguchi smiled. “I came from Heaven!”

The elevator door opened, and Kei hurried out of there, to the park. 

When he sat on the bench and Yamaguchi suddenly appeared beside him,_ standing _on the bench, Kei just sighed. Okay, he had gone full mad. Great.

“Look! Those are puppies, right? How adorable!”

And apparently his hallucination liked dogs.

  


Kei was a simple man. When he could not do something, he quickly avoided being frustrated by abandoning it altogether. So he had done with volleyball, with guitar-playing, with making friends.

So he soon gave up trying to get rid of the hallucination. Especially because other people seemed to see it, too. Like the park guard telling him to _ not stand on the bench. _

Whatever.

And so, he went back home, he went to sleep. When Kei woke, Yamaguchi was standing on the other side of the room, glaring at his alarm clock.

Great.

And days passed, and months passed. And somewhere along those days and months, Kei realized that, crazy as it sounded, it was more likely that Yamaguchi was real. That everything was real. It was too consistent to be a dream, too long and massive to be a hallucination.

So he accepted it.

And he grew used to Yamaguchi. Waking up with Yamaguchi’s excited voice, asking questions about a completely normal human object. Walking and suddenly having company. Hearing completely incomprehensible comments about the creation of the word, the meaning of life, and Kei’s own experiences.

In fact, he grew fond of it. Yamaguchi was just… he was unashamedly different. And that was reasonable, considering he was not human. But it was nice. It was nice not having to explain every aspect of his life. Yamaguchi already knew about it. It was nice being able to hear first hand accounts on dinosaurs. It was nice, having someone to talk to.

By now, they knew. _ They _ knew that was what Yamaguchi had come around to ‘repair’: his total isolation. And by now, he had grown enough to realize that it was true. That he did need people.

But he refused to look for them.

  


_ “So, that’s my mission then!” _

_ “I see. Makes sense, I suppose.” A pause. “What happens if I refuse?” _

_ “Well, I keep trying until you don’t.” _

_ “I’ll humor you, what happens then?” _

_ “Oh… well…” _

_ “What is it.” _

_ “Then I move onto another assignment, I think? You know your situation is quite rare but-” _

  


He refused.

  


And so, around a year had passed, and Kei still avoided it. If Yamaguchi said ‘I sense that person has a compatible energy to yours’, Kei just answered with ‘Wow, that must suck’.

And so on, and so forth.

And now they were there, lying under the stars, several kilometers away from the lights of Tokyo and civilization. 

“And near that star, there used to be a constellation that- Tsukki! You are not even looking at it.”

Yamaguchi was, of course, right. Instead, Kei had been looking at him. The glow in his eyes, his hair falling to his face. The dots in his skin, far more interesting than those on the sky. 

“Ah, sorry.” Kei muttered, flush hidden in the darkness of the night. 

“It’s fine, it’s fine.” 

“Mh.” A pause. “Why did you want to go stargazing?”

“Oh, well, I just thought it would be nice.”

“It seems a very specific idea, though.”

Another pause.

“Come on, admit it,” Kei prodded him, turning to look at him.

“I…” Yamaguchi sighed. “Saw it on TV.”

“You saw people stargazing on TV and wanted to do it?”

“Mhm.”

“Haven’t you seen the stars before? I mean, you _ are _ in Heaven.”

“Heaven isn’t exactly physical, Tsukki! It’s not like we are hanging out in clouds! But even then I…”

He stayed quiet. 

“You?”

“I don’t know, it seemed nice. To sit, to talk.”

Kei sighed. “You are not going to convince me to change my ways.”

Yamaguchi sighed. “I know.” And just like that, he fell silent. It was not normal for him to give up so easily.

Kei turned to better look at him, and furrowed his brow. “There’s something bothering you.”

Yamaguchi closed his eyes, shaking his head. When he opened them, he was staring at Kei. “I…” He smiled weakly. “I think you are right.”

“Huh? You’ve got to be more specific than that. I tend to be.” He tried to get rid of the tension by being an asshole, he failed.

But Yamaguchi chuckled, before sobering up. “I’m a bad angel.”

Kei looked at him, quiet. Then he mumbled: “Oh. Come on. You know… I meant it as a… You don’t have to…”

“No, no. I know you meant it as a joke. But. It’s the truth.”

“No it’s not.”

Yamaguchi sighed. “It is.”

“Why do you think so? Because you haven’t been able to change me?”

“Because I haven’t been able to make you achieve your full potential. That’s… well, that…”

“I don’t want to.”

“Why not?”

Kei pursed his lips. 

“Another angel would have managed that by now, Tsukki. Like, like Hinata. He has done it many times!”

“I have no idea who that is, but-”

“Or Bokuto himself!”

“Well, that’s nice, but he sucks at his actual jo-”

“But I can’t!”

Kei rolled his eyes and then took off his glasses. He pinched the bridge of his nose. Yamaguchi’s face showed sadness and he did not want to see it. It was his fault. “You can.”

“I haven’t been able to! I can’t even get you to tell me what I’m doing wrong, why don’t you want to?”

Kei turned to give his back to Yamaguchi. “Just drop it.”

“You asked me, though…” Yamaguchi muttered, before huffing.

They stayed silent for a bit.

And then Yamaguchi spoke softly. “I must be the problem.”

“Yamaguchi, just… cut it out. There’s no problem.”

“There is! I’m boycotting myself.” Yamaguchi’s voice was tense, like he was saying something that he did not quite want to say, but that he had been thinking for a bit.

Kei looked at him from over his shoulder. “What in the hell are you talking about? Why would you do that?”

This time, Yamaguchi seemed to refuse to talk.

And Kei’s heart thumped in his chest and, oh no, he knew that feeling.

Hope.

The same he drowned whenever he finished some menial but irritating task, or told Yamaguchi about a good day, or actually called his brother, only to see the sparkle of pride on Yamaguchi’s eyes.

And the same he smothered when Yamaguchi started a binge of rom-coms and Disney movies, insisting Kei watch it with him. 

The same as when Yamaguchi came up with new things to do, that sounded vaguely coupley. Like going for ice cream, or ice skating, or stargazing.

The same.

He did not want to feel it.

It was the light, just the light that made it seem as if Yamaguchi was flushed. He knew that was impossible, because angels’ bodies did not work like that.

Kei sighed, rolling to fully face Yamaguchi again. “Do you sometimes think we are similar?”

Yamaguchi scowled lightly. “What?”

“If you are boycotting yourself, well… I do that all the time. Do you think we are similar?”

“I guess? Why are you asking this.”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Do- do you sometimes feel like you are doing something wrong? Not- not like a mistake, but like… morally.”

“Wha- I’m an angel. I don’t-”

“Do you?”

“Tsukki, what’s on your mind?”

“Nothing. Everything. I don’t know. I feel- I don’t want you to… do you feel like a failure?”

Yamaguchi opened his mouth, then looked away. “Yes.”

“Then I’ll do it.”

“What? You’ll do… you’ll do what?”

“I don’t know, whatever. Anything,” Kei felt weird, like there was something breaking inside him. “If you want me to… to open up to people and make friends, and get a… boyfriend. I’ll do it. I’ll try to reach my full potential, whatever that means.”

Yamaguchi blinked. He did not sound happy when he spoke. “Why are you doing this?”

And Kei could have said many things. Like that he was tired of being alone. Like that he did not want to give up on things anymore. But it was just the contrary. He would be alone. He was giving up. And he did not want to lie, but he could not tell the truth.

“Tsukki..?”

Kei took a deep breath, and it was shaky. “Well, aren’t you happy?”

“I… you should be the one who’s happy, Tsukki.”

But he would not be.

He would not be.

“Don’t cry.”

“I’m n-”

And then Yamaguchi reached forward to his cheek and wiped a tear away.

“Oh, I guess I am.”

Yamaguchi smiled at him with a tenderness that Kei knew he would never get from anyone else outside of, maybe, his family.

No, no. He did not want to let go.

And if he did…

Well, at least he could be stupid.

He put his hand over Yamaguchi’s. The angel tensed a bit.

“Tsukki, wha-?”

Kei closed his eyes, clinging to the hand in his grasp.

“I’m in love with you.”

And there was silence.

And then, and then his hand was empty and he was alone again.

  


Kei did not attempt to look for Yamaguchi.

Instead, he kept his word. He made friends. He made up with his family. He made more effort when studying.

Except, well, he never got a boyfriend.

And years passed.

And he got his degree in paleontology, then his masters, then his PhD.

Then he used things Yamaguchi had told him about the beginning of times, worked out ways to prove them scientifically. Got awards, got international recognition. Funded ways to get clean energy, got famous and loved in just ten years.

But he didn’t love back, not like he had.

And he wasn’t happy.

And though his discoveries were beneficial for the whole of humanity, and he understood that was what mattered in the end, to the ‘great order of things’ and the ‘mysterious ways’, he felt used and empty inside.

  


One day, someone ran into him. Kei felt the same he always felt at those situations. The same old hope. It vanished when he realized the person was far too short to be him. He knew angels only had one human shape.

But then the person looked up at him. 

“There you are!” he said the same words Yamaguchi had said, and it felt as if Kei’s heart beat again for the first time in years.

“Who are you?” He asked, quickly.

“I’m Hinata and you should come with me.”

He remembered that name. Kei nodded and followed him without thinking, feeling almost alive, for the first time in years.

“Yamaguchi didn’t want to come looking after you,” Hinata told him as he ran. “He thought you wouldn’t want to see him.”

“But I do.”

“I know!”

“He’s an idiot.” 

“Yep!”

“Is he okay?”

“Mostly.”

“Mostly?”

“You’ll see.”

And they ran, ran to a little ramshackle building, to a little run down room.

Yamaguchi turned to look at them, and his eyes went wide. “Tsukki?”

And Kei ran to wrap his arms around him.

Yamaguchi gasped. “I didn’t think…you’d actually…”

“Shut up, of course I would.” Kei said, hugging him tight. 

Yamaguchi stepped back after a bit. Kei allowed him to, but he still clung to Yamaguchi’s shirt.

“It’s been… a long time.”

“Longer for me than you, I’m sure.”

Yamaguchi looked away. There was something strange in his face, but Kei could not put his finger on it. Either way, he was still striking: the spots on his face, the brightness of his eyes, the hair on his face.

“I’m sorry Tsukki.”

“I don’t care.” Kei said, and saw the passing flash of pain in Yamaguchi’s eyes before he clarified: “I just care that you are here.”

Yamaguchi’s lip wobbled, and then he looked down. “Oh.”

And that was when Kei saw it.

He was blushing.

Kei double checked. Kei blinked. Kei pressed a hand to Yamaguchi’s face and it was very warm.

“Tsukki…”

“Yamaguchi?”

“...”

“What happened to you.”

Hinata, who was still there, laughed. “He’s human.”

Kei turned to look at Hinata, who smiled fondly.

“He’s what?”

“He’ll tell you.” Hinata chuckled and walked away from them, waving a little.

Kei turned to Yamaguchi. He could see it now. His face was that of someone slightly older than when he had last seen him. “You are what?”

“It… took a bit of… paperwork but… basically…”

“So... like… what?”

“I was supposedly raised in foster care. My full name’s Yamaguchi Tadashi. I have an ID. I even have a university degree.”

“On what?”

“Animal care.”

“Oh, are you any good?”

“Decent.”

Kei nodded. 

Yamaguchi looked away. “Is this a problem? Me being… a person?”

“No,” Kei replied, immediately.

“Oh… just... Okay.” Yamaguchi looked away, and hesitated to speak again. “Just so you know, I don’t expect you to still-”

“I still do.”

Yamaguchi glanced back at him, eyes wide.

“Yamaguchi, I still do. I…”

Yamaguchi sighed, huffing out a laugh. “I do too.” Perplexed, Kei stared. “I did, too, then.”

After he recovered from the most wonderful shock, Kei laughed. “I knew it.”

“You did not. You are not that optimistic.”

Kei smiled at him. “You are right. Just optimistic enough to believe you when you say it.”

“I’m glad, Tsukki.”

Yamaguchi grinned at him and leaned to press a kiss to Kei’s cheek. “I still don’t know how to drive, though.”

Kei rolled his eyes. “I’ll teach you. We have time.”

And indeed, they did.

**Author's Note:**

> I will do as much as I can for this week and ship. Even if it's weird!!
> 
> Who's with me?


End file.
